New Delhi: The
eighth conclave of the Ramalingaswami Fellows was organized by Department of
Biotechnology and National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New
Delhi between February,15-17, 2018.
Ramalingaswami
Fellowship program is a flagship scheme of the Department of Biotechnology,
Government of India that is designed to attract Indian talent working abroad to
come home.
Being the tenth
year of the Fellowship, stock of the progress and assess were made.
In this
connection, Hon’ble Union Minister for
Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Minister of Environment, Forest
and Climate Change, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, visited NIPGR on February 17,
2018 and addressed the Ramalingaswami Fellows.
Dr. S.S. Kohli, Adviser, Department of Science &
Technology also interacted with the Fellows.
The
Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship was conceived with the idea of encouraging
scientists (Indian Nationals) working abroad who would like to return to the
home country to pursue their research interests in Modern Biology,
Biotechnology, Life Sciences and other related areas.
Dr. Harsh
Vardhan indicated that the principal objective of the scheme is to improve the
country’s human resource capacity in Life Sciences, Modern Biology and
Biotechnology research-in terms of development, translation and diffusion by
converting ‘brain drain’ into ‘brain gain’.
During the
last ten years, 1492 applications were received and out of these 396 were
offered the fellowship and 283 have already taken up positions in Indian
laboratories.
So far, 190
fellows have obtained permanent faculty positions in various host institutions
in India. Fellows have excelled in their research. They have published 833
research papers in peer-reviewed national and international scientific
journals.
Further, 53
new technologies have been developed by them, of which 33 have been patented
and two have been converted into start-up companies.
A number of
Ramalingaswami Fellows have received various awards/recognitions, including the
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (two Fellows).
Dr. Meenakshi
Munshi, Adviser, Department of Biotechnology, during her interaction with the
press, had announced that the Fellowship has been revised from Rs. 85,000/-
plus HRA 7,500/- per month to Rs. 1,00,000/- plus 18,500/- HRA per month.
Also the
number of Fellowships has been increased from 50 to 75 Fellows at a given time.